Christof Maletsky
23 May 2001
Windhoek — An HIV-positive woman, who has recently lost a three- year-old child to AIDS, has appealed to the Government to make Nevirapine - an HIV-AIDS drug which reduces mother-to-child transmission of HIV - available to HIV-positive pregnant women.
Edla Kaurianga, who buried her baby last Saturday, thinks she might not have lost her son Jeffrey if she had had access to the drug which slows the reproduction of HIV by interfering with reverse transcriptase, an important viral enzyme.
This enzyme is essential for HIV to incorporate its genetic material into cells.
Nevirapine - also called Viramune - costs US$4 and normally one dose is given to a pregnant mother before birth and another to a baby 72 hours after birth."
"I want the Government to help us with the drugs. We want our children to live, even if we die. Although the drug is not 100 per cent safe, at least it gives us a chance to have healthy babies," pleaded an emotional Kaurianga.
Kaurianga knew she was HIV positive before she became pregnant but said that she, like many other HIV-positive mothers, was first uninformed about the chances of transmitting the disease to the baby and also "not in control" of family planning."
"I feel like I killed my little Jeffrey. I was very close to him and struggled with him for three years but to no avail. The one day he would smile and laugh but the next day would be like hell with him crying from morning to sunset," Kaurianga, who receives TB treatment, said.
She said there are many other HIV-positive mothers going through the same process, helplessly watching their children die, while the Government promises each year that the drugs will be made available the following year.
Baby Jeffrey could hardly crawl or speak and spent most of his short life in hospital.
He stopped growing at eight months and eventually died of pneumonia.
Agnes Tom from Catholic AIDS Action, who counselled Kaurianga, said the organisation found her in the TB hospital after she had given birth."
"The baby was malnourished and we immediately started to help her with food and counselling. The problem with people like her is that they only realise the seriousness of their status after they become pregnant. It makes everything difficult for them and us," she said.
Tom also spoke about how the mothers blame themselves for the deaths of the babies and added that it generally contributes to their own deteriorating physical conditions.
She said many of the women they counsel know that they must not give birth and that they must use condoms "but the relationships are not level"."
"Most of the time men decide when they want sex and how. Since we know about the circumstances the women face, we cannot say that they failed to play by the rules and must be left to take care of themselves. We can't turn our backs on them," Tom said.
Jeffrey was one of the 600 000 babies born each year throughout the world with the virus, or 1 800 each day.
Ninety per cent of these cases are in the developing world.
Without HIV drugs the child mortality rates in some African countries will double by the year 2010, experts predict. Most babies are infected in the womb, at birth or through breastfeeding.
Up to 43 per cent of African HIV-positive women will pass on the virus to their babies.
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